June 28th, 2009

A couple of weeks ago i had this nice idea of making an iPhone app that could run DHTML in a self contained form, comparable to a standalone app (with local storage).

Now it turns out Apple does not allow apps to run external (unapproved) code, as happened to the soon to be released C64 emulator (which includes a BASIC intrpreter).

Here is the excerpt from the iPhone SDK Agreement:

“3.3.2 An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).”

Well, now the remaining options are that either this hypotetical app becomes a tool to build unmodifiable apps to be submitted to Apple like the cited NimbleKit by VolnaTech, or it must claim that the app would only store actual websites that would be anyway be available thru Safari (online only).